Nov

10

I wrote on Nov. 4 about a new era in the Maldives, but it appears that the new era may be something else again. According to multiple press reports, new president-elect Mohamed Nasheed wants to buy a new homeland for his people to give them a place to go if the sea rises as predicted because of global warming.

The UN forecasts that the sea could rise as much as two feet by 2100, and since most of the Maldives is less than five feet above sea level (many areas are less than three feet), life will be precarious there. Continue reading »

Nov

4

Many years ago I stood near the southernmost point of India at Kanyakumari gazing out over the Indian Ocean. Somewhere over that horizon lay the Maldives, an isolated collection of atolls laid out like a string of gems some 400 miles away.

They’d been pulling at me since I first encountered them on a globe many years before and I’d traveled there many times in my imagination. Standing in the tropical breeze that day I knew I couldn’t visit them this time, but was certain I’d get there one day.